You normally associate the Zoho brand with web office and as a company that is both innovative and makes really good products.
Zoho has long been competing, almost head-on, with Google Docs but now they have another Google product in sight – Gmail.
Zoho introduced web mail last month with goodies that are missing in Gmail. For instance, you get unlimited storage (Gmail has a 7 GB limit), there are no contextual ads and you can read mails offline via Google Gears. The world is still waiting for Google to add offline support in Gmail.
Best of all, you can get into Zoho Mail using an existing Gmail / Google Account.
Are these features convincing enough for Gmail users to make a switch or even try Zoho Mail? I don’t know but these twitter reactions and forum threads do lend some clues.
So what is Zoho trying next to give users a feel of their new mail service? I logged into Zoho Office yesterday (using Google Account) to check their remote log-out feature but instead of opening the documents dashboard, Zoho took me to the Inbox view of Zoho Mail.
When you have the application opened (even without asking), chances are high that you’ll spend some time exploring it. Not a bad idea but there should be an easy way for users to change the default preference for the Zoho start page.
Update: You can now set Zoho as your default mail client in Firefox similar to Google & Yahoo mail.
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/email/zoho-mail-trying-to-compete-with-gmail/5280/
web: http://www.labnol.org/ email: amit@labnol.org
Reader Comments
Thanks for the nice post on Zoho Mail, Amit!
When you now login at link , you’re now taken to Zoho Personal/Business depending on the type of account you are subscribed to. Both have similar interfaces but a business account obviously varies from personal in some respects (something similar to personal GMail account Vs Google Apps account).
The page you land defaults to the Mail app but the default preferences can indeed be changed. Goto Settings -> Applications, drag-drop the applications in the order you want them to be listed in and hit the ‘Save’ button.
Written by Arvind on 11.07.08
In 2009 there will be IMAP support. POP3 is already working, so just a matter of time until people move away from the former fast Gmail. I like Zoho. It’s really nice, especially the good-old folders.
Only bad thing… all the good @zoho.com addresses are gone :’(
Written by Marco on 11.07.08
Used it(had to wait a long time to get an invite when it was in testing stage) and it’s better than hotmail and yahoo if not gmail.
Written by Apinder on 11.08.08
Gmail is universal. Google has been the innovator. All others are just following, trying to be better. Seems to be a rat race.
Written by Vineet on 11.08.08
google has shown that getting into the email business can be extremely profitable.
Written by Jesse W. on 11.09.08
@Vineet
Nope. Google hasn’t been an innovator. All copied ideas.
Search engines like Altavista were better than Google, mail providers were there before Google even thought about ugly Google Mail (many with MORE GB than what Gmail has now!) and the web based documents stuff from Google is just a cheap copy of Thinkfree and Zoho. Both existed way before Google bought Writely.
So, who’s the innovator? Just because everyone knows Google, people think Google invented the Internet (sorry Al!)… silly world.
Written by Marco on 11.09.08
@Marco, even if google is not a great innovator, but still it’s better than others as it doesn’t robs users of there precious limited bandwidth by showing flash ads as yahoo, live and others do.
Written by Apinder on 11.10.08
@Apinder
True!!! Not yet… let’s talk again in a year ;-)
Written by Marco on 11.10.08